


Searching for Words

by nubianamy



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Babies, Caring Danny "Danno" Williams, Developing Relationship, Hurt Steve McGarrett, M/M, POV Danny "Danno" Williams, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25977709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nubianamy/pseuds/nubianamy
Summary: Danny stays in the hospital to watch over Steve while he's on serious pain medication after recovering from an injury.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 32
Kudos: 172
Collections: H50 Writers Club Discord Challenges, Loopy Steve Challenge





	Searching for Words

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, wow, technically this is my second Hawaii Five-0 story, but it's the first one I've posted. Thanks to the H50 Writers Club for the prompt!

Danny glared at the x-ray for a long minute before turning toward the doctor. “What do you mean, he broke his _face?”_

“Several fractures, here, here, and here.” The doctor pointed at what Danny had to assume was Steve’s right eye socket, his cheek, and the top jaw. The jagged cracks in the image made him shudder. “He has a mild concussion, too. The good news is, none of the fractures are in mobile joints. We put in a drain under the scalp to avoid fluid build-up. Until that comes out, he’s staying here. An impact like this, he’s lucky there was no brain damage.”

“He’s always had a hard head.” Danny smirked, then paused, adding, “I mean he’s stubborn, not—never mind.”

The doctor didn’t even look up from her chart. “It says here you’re his emergency contact. Nobody at home?”

“No, nobody at home.”

“Well, Detective, if you have to get back on duty, I can have the hospital contact you when—”

“No,” Danny said, a little too loudly. “No, I’m—I’m fine. Can I just wait here?”

She raised her eyebrows. “There’s a waiting room around the corner.”

It wasn’t a short wait. Danny ran out of magazines long after they stopped being interesting, although he appreciated the eight tips for a juicier turkey. By the time they wheeled Steve into recovery, he was ready to start doing pull-ups on the privacy partition. Then he saw the expression on Steve’s face.

“Should he look like that?” Danny squinted, trying to edge closer to the gurney. “I don’t think he should look like that. Isn’t he still asleep?”

“He’s coming out of sedation a little earlier than usual,” said the nurse. “Let’s wait and see how he does.”

“What? That’s not what you do. That’s not a thing.” He crossed his arms before deciding that wasn’t enough and uncrossed them again, gesturing emphatically at the curtain. “You give him drugs _before_ he makes that face.”

“Detective Williams—”

She frowned as Steve made a little pitiful noise. His hands clenched into fists. Danny’s hands constricted in sympathy.

“Exhibit A,” he insisted, brandishing a finger at Steve.

She was absent for what felt like two hours. Danny watched Steve’s face shift from one expression of pain to another. He sat down and blew out a breath, leaning his forehead in his hand, until Steve made another noise and he stood up again.

Finally the nurse returned, bearing a syringe.

“These are some pretty heavy-duty painkillers,” she warned him. “But facial fractures aren’t fun. Until he gets that drain out, he’s going to need them. Be aware, if we give him these, he’s not going to really be himself a good deal of the time.”

“Trust me, that might be an improvement.” He eyed the syringe, then Steve’s IV bag. “Well?”

“Also, he’s going to need someone to watch him for at least the first forty-eight hours. At least.”

“Yeah, okay.” He mentally reviewed his calendar, crossing things off as he went. He didn’t really need groceries. “I’ll—the department. We’ve got him covered. It. Covered.”

“If you’re sure?”

“For the love of God, just give it to him.”

Steve’s restless movements diminished immediately. Danny felt the tension drain from his own body just as quickly. He inspected Steve’s face, but his brow was relaxed and his fingers had stopped twitching.

“That’s a good sign, right?”

“It means he’s not in pain anymore,” the nurse said, nodding. “But like I said, he’s going to need constant surveillance until he’s aware enough to tell us how much pain he’s in.”

“I heard you.” Danny assured her, and she departed. He zeroed in on Steve’s face again, letting out a relieved sigh. “Well, it looks like it’s you and me for the next two days, buddy. I’d better get some of those word search books from the gift shop. I’m pretty sure if I read one more Vanity Fair, I’m going to turn into an interior decorator.”

* * *

Kono dropped by Steve’s hospital room after work with furikake chicken.

“I can take a shift watching him,” she offered, but Danny waved her off, and he could tell she was relieved he hadn’t taken her up on it.

“After all, I am the one with all the experience putting up with a place I despise,” Danny said to Steve after she’d gone. “Being in the hospital is a breeze by comparison to living on this goddamn island.”

Steve, still sedated, said nothing. Danny turned the page of his word search book.

“I’m still on _modes of transportation_ ,” he read to Steve. “Help me out. Well, there’s AIRPLANE.” He circled it. “And TRAIN. Come on, there’s LOCOMOTIVE, too. That’s double-dipping. What else… maybe they’ve got RUST BUCKET for your car.”

“Mmm.”

Danny let the book fall to his lap and scooted his chair two inches closer to the bed. “Steve?”

He watched the corner of Steve’s lips turn up. Then Steve inhaled, so slowly it was almost as if he’d caught a whiff of the most alluring aroma. Danny found himself breathing with him.

“Hey,” Danny said softly. He reached out a hand and touched the blanket, then jerked it away, uncertain what exactly might be beneath that spot.

“Ummm.” Steve exhaled a long sigh. He screwed up his eyes. For an alarming moment Danny thought he might be in pain, until Steve’s whole body arched in a delicious, full-body stretch. When he was relaxed again, he opened his eyes, still smiling. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Danny whispered. He’d already said that. “Uh—how’re you feeling?”

“Me?” Steve’s eyes slowly traced the outline of the room, from one side to the other. His lips pursed and did a very distracting set of calisthenics. “My face. I can’t feel my face.”

“That’s because you busted it and the nurse gave you amazing drugs. Supraorbital ridge, zygomatic arch, maxilla.”

“…expialidocious?” Steve finished, and giggled.

Danny shook his head. “You, my friend, are higher than a kite. Those are the bones you broke. Supraorbital ridge…” He reached out and tapped Steve’s right eyebrow. “Zygomatic arch…” He moved his finger to his cheekbone, and paused longer than he needed to before touching Steve’s upper lip. “Maxilla. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to memorize their names from your chart. Not a lot of reading material in this room, other than word searches.”

“Exactly how long have you been sitting around thinking about my bones?”

“Uh…” Danny’s gaze slid to the blanket. He chuckled. “A hell of a long time.”

When he looked up again, Steve’s eyes were closed again. He waited until Steve’s breathing evened out, then carefully pulled the blanket up over his hand bearing the IV drip.

“Stay warm, buddy,” he murmured.

Steve let out a contented sigh, the smile flickering over his face before he slid back into sleep.

Danny stayed where he was until there was no way to justify watching Steve anymore, then moved back to the recliner with his word search book. He turned to the next page. This one was dogs.

“RETRIEVER.” He circled it. “POMERANIAN.” He glanced up again as Steve shifted in his sleep, and let the smile linger before turning back to his book. “PEKINGESE…”

* * *

The next morning, Danny asked Kono to stop at his house and bring him clean clothes, a toothbrush, and a razor. She also brought breakfast and an actual pillow.

“My auntie spent a long time in the hospital with cancer,” Kono said, giving him a sympathetic smile. “Those naugahyde recliners have seen better days.”

Steve was kind of awake for part of her visit, long enough for Kono to laugh at him, but not long enough for him to make any kind of sense. 

“I will pay you cash money if you get some of that on video,” she told Danny.

He nodded graciously. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Aside from the nurse checking in once an hour, it was mostly quiet in Steve’s room. Now that he was awake more often, Danny faced the wall, so there would be fewer opportunities for Steve to catch him staring at his bandaged face.

“Vegetables,” he said. “ZUCCHINI, that’s an easy one. Not too many double C vegetables.”

“Radish,” Steve mumbled.

Danny grinned. “Drugs do not help you spell, babe.”

“Rad.” He licked his lips. “Rad-ee-key-o.”

“Excuse me?”

“Veg’table. Double C. See-see.” He snorted. “See?”

Danny found it and slowly circled RADICCHIO. “Huh.”

“Tastes better when you grill it.”

Something in his tone made Danny look up to see Steve wince. He put the pencil down. “What? What’s the matter?”

“Head,” Steve admitted. He blinked again, then made a face. “Hurts.”

Danny went over and leaned on the nurse call button that didn’t make any noise, but that was too far away from Steve. He returned to his chair. “Help is on the way.”

Steve smiled through his grimace. “My hero.”

“Sir Gripes-A-Lot, at your service.” He looked back and forth between Steve’s face and the door, then trotted back to the button and pushed it again. “This is the extent of my skill. I push all your buttons.”

“You do,” Steve agreed. He fumbled for Danny’s hand and squeezed it. “All of them.”

There was a very brief awkward silence before the nurse showed up to give Steve more pain meds. It was not long enough for Danny to say, even jokingly, _can you be more specific,_ but that was probably for the best.

* * *

He could tell Steve was awake, even in the dark. The emergency light was not quite enough to read by, so Danny’s word search book lay discarded on the tray table beside Steve’s cup of melted ice. Danny had found a position in the recliner that did not destroy his back, as long as he wedged his good pillow underneath his shoulder.

“Maxilla,” Steve whispered into the dimness.

“What?”

“Maxwell. Maximillion. Maaaax-ine.”

“Go back to sleep.”

“Do most people name the bones in their face?”

Danny could see Steve’s silhouette, but not much else. “I doubt it.”

“All the bones in the whole world, they all have the same names.” Steve _sounded_ very reasonable, far more than he’d sounded all day, regardless of the content of his sentences. “Why is that?”

“They’re not names,” Danny said. “They’re job titles. Your supraorbital ridge holds your eye in. Your zygomatic arch, uh, gives your face cheekbones.” _Makes you beautiful_ was not going to pass his lips.

“My upper jaw, Maxine, bites.”

“Well, not alone. She needs her partner Mandible to do that.”

“Or do other things.”

“Sure? I mean… eat. I bet you’ll have to wait until Maxine’s better before you can do any chewing.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

Danny wondered exactly where he was going to let this conversation go. He took a long breath, then said, “Okay, what _were_ you thinking about?”

The silence stretched out. Danny filled it with all the other things he could imagine doing with Steve’s upper jaw, but there were no other words from Steve. He stayed in the chair, wide awake and turned on, for a long time before finally finding his way back to sleep.

* * *

When Danny returned to the room the following morning, Steve was awake, tracking Danny with his eyes. He sighed.

“Of course I pick the exact half-hour period to be gone when you’re lucid. You feeling okay?”

Steve nodded carefully. He reached a hand up and patted his face through the bandage. “Still pretty numb.”

“That’s good. That’s what you want.”

“You get something to eat?”

“I ate half of yesterday’s breakfast an hour ago.”

Steve turned in bed to look at the door. “So where were you?”

“What, a guy can’t take a walk? Don’t tell me you even noticed I was gone.”

“I noticed, as in you weren’t here. Where—?”

“For crying out loud,” Danny muttered. “What do you want me to say? I walked from the east wing to the west wing of the sixth floor. A very scenic route, I might add, which included directional signs, terrible art, and linoleum. Then I did a one-eighty and returned to this spot, where you proceeded to grill me for no reason.”

Danny didn’t wait to hear Steve offer an apology. He picked up his word search book and flopped back into the recliner, glaring at the jumbled letters.

“You were gone a while.”

“Maybe I needed a break from your scintillating conversation.”

“I’m just saying, you must have seen something else in the west wing of the sixth floor to be gone for twenty-three minutes. Or longer; that’s all I could count from the time I woke up.”

Danny searched for a word he recognized, but nothing leapt out at him. He tapped the book with his pencil.

“If you must know,” he said, “I was in the postpartum maternity ward.”

He didn’t look at Steve, but the quality of his silence said more than any expression. It stopped being interrogatory and became something softer, like a good pillow.

“The newborns, they put them in these little beds,” Danny went on, into the gentler silence. “Close to one another, but not really together. Except sometimes there are two, right in one bed. Always gets to me.”

“That’s really…” Steve paused. “I don’t know the words for what that is.”

Danny had to grin. “You must be running low on those meds, then, because the last two days you’ve had all _kinds_ of words.”

He wasn’t about to throw anything at Steve he couldn’t handle, because, well, broken face, but he got up out of the recliner and came over to the chair beside the bed. Steve was just looking at him.

“Flowers this time,” Danny said, circling CHRYSANTHEMUM across the bottom.

“Okay?” Steve didn’t look like he was in any condition to focus on the paper, but after a moment, he offered, “RHODODENDRON. If that’s not too long to fit.”

“Not too long.” He found it right away. “Good one.”

“You probably miss Grace, huh.”

“Is that a question? Of course I miss her.” He circled CARNATION. “I miss all kinds of things.”

“So is that why twenty-three minutes of newborns in bassinets?”

“Minus travel time. And I can’t believe you remembered the word for those little beds. You, on excellent drugs.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think.” Steve shifted toward him. “You think you want to have more kids?”

He didn’t say _single cop father, what, are you kidding?_ Instead, he nodded. Steve nodded, too, as best as he could around the bandages.

When Steve was quiet for a while, Danny looked up, expecting to see he’d fallen asleep, but Steve was just watching him. He looked away when Danny caught his eye.

“You need more meds?”

“Probably,” said Steve. “But I think I’d rather be in pain than be out of control.”

Danny was surprised into a laugh. “That is exactly true. And honest.”

“Yeah, well. I think you deserve honest from me.”

“I think you deserve more pain meds.” He started to stand up, but Steve’s hand caught his arm, and he sat back down.

“I shouldn’t need medicine to tell you the truth.”

Danny nodded, even though he wasn’t really sure what he was agreeing with. He watched Steve’s eyes close, feeling a little desperate to keep him awake, to hear more remarkable words, but he remained silent. Eventually he went over to the nurse call button and pushed it.

“How’s your partner doing?” asked the nurse, grinning. “Not making much sense, I bet.”

“No,” Danny agreed. “Not much.”

* * *

All the gross things happened on one day, taking out Steve’s drainage tube and his catheter and his IV, but Danny didn’t exactly track the pace of events until the nurse came in, read his chart, and smiled. “The doctor says you can switch to oral codeine.”

Steve glanced at Danny, then back at the nurse. “Yeah? Meaning I can go home?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Danny protested. “He’s not healed. He’s not anywhere near healed. You think he’s going to stay in bed if you let him go home?”

“You’re not leaving the hospital yet. Let’s see how you do today.”

Steve looked unjustifiably offended after she left. “You think I wouldn’t follow orders to stay in bed?”

“ _No,”_ Danny ground out. “You wouldn’t. And I really don’t want to think about you driving on codeine.”

Steve complained his way through another protein shake for breakfast, fighting with the straw. Danny had nothing but sympathy for him after trying a sip; it tasted terrible.

“Hey, I could go get you a real milkshake.”

“It’s all right. I can cope with this garbage.” He poked the can with one glum finger.

“It’s not a problem—”

Steve looked alarmed when Danny made to get up. “Just—stay.” Then he sighed. “You know what, you should go. You’ve been in this room I don’t even know how many hours. I can’t believe they let you stay here this long.”

Danny evaluated the tally marks on the back of his word search book. It was definitely more than a hundred by now. “Tell you what, you tell me what flavor you want, I’ll have Kono bring you a milkshake after work, with dinner. She can get them to put some extra protein powder in it, make the nurses happy.”

Steve’s smile was hampered by the bandages, but he definitely looked mollified by this plan. “Yeah, okay.”

By lunch Steve clearly appeared to be uncomfortable, but he took his pills and settled back, shifting restlessly in the bed. Danny’s attempts to distract him with word searches of American presidents weren’t working, either.

“I’m just done with being in this bed,” Steve said.

“Okay. Hang on.” Danny took a peek out into the hallway. The queue of empty wheelchairs were still against the wall, where they’d been all week. He went to get one, trying to look like he knew what he was doing. Steve watched as he parked it next to the bed. “Let’s go for a walk.”

That was definitely a glare. “You expect me to—”

“You’re not attached to anything anymore. They can’t complain if you’re sitting, right? Come _on.”_

Danny had to help him shift his legs off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. Steve’s hairy thigh gave him pause.

“I think you need pants for this.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any.” Steve gave a shrug. “Put a blanket over my lap if you can’t cope.”

Danny didn’t bother to address his ability to cope with Steve’s nudity, but he did take a sheet from the pile of clean linens on the shelf and gingerly tucked it around Steve’s waist. Then he attempted a brisk smile. “Ready for a field trip?”

They got nothing but smiles from the nurses on duty. By now Danny knew them all by name, but they didn’t stop to engage, letting them proceed through the east wing of the sixth floor without question.

As they passed the elevators, Steve glanced up at him. “What do you say?”

“Huh?”

He took hold of the wheels and leaned forward in anticipation. “We gonna make a break for it?”

When Danny grabbed his shoulder with a noise of protest, Steve laughed. Then he reached up and rested his hand on top of Danny’s, just briefly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.

When Steve let him have his hand back, Danny grasped both handles of the wheelchair and continued past the elevators.

Steve did not seem surprised by their destination. He craned his neck to look through the window at the rows of bassinets. “I’m going to stand up, okay?”

Danny held his arm, trying to ignore Steve’s gaping hospital gown. They gazed at the multitude of tiny bundles in silence for a while.

Then Steve pointed. “That one’s Veronica.”

“What, are there nametags?”

“No, I’m just saying.” He pointed again. “And that’s… how about Oscar.”

Danny stared at him, trying not to feel offended. “You don’t just _give_ babies names. It’s a process. Pros, cons, family considerations.”

“What, you want me to interview them first?”

“They’re not even your babies!”

Steve was already laughing. “You think they care?”

 _“I_ care!”

Steve stopped laughing. He leaned in harder against Danny’s supporting arm.

“I get it,” he said. “Names are important. They’re not just words. You have to give them some thought.”

They watched the nurse prepare and give a bottle to one of the bundles. Truthfully, Danny watched the nurse, while Steve watched him. He could feel the heat spreading up his neck to his cheeks.

“What?” he said at last.

“Nothing.”

“What happened to _you deserve honest?”_

Steve sighed. “I was just thinking, you totally should have more kids.”

That was impossible to respond to. Danny set his jaw and willed himself not to cry.

A smiling couple moved into the space beside them, cooing at the babies. The woman turned to the two of them. “Which one is yours?”

Danny took a step back, but he was attached to Steve, and they couldn’t go very far. “None of them.”

She looked confused. He knew the polite thing would have been to ask the same question of them, but he wasn’t sure he could bear it if Oscar or Veronica had been theirs. He made Steve sit back down in the chair and wheeled him away.

Steve was pale and sweating by the time they got back to his room. He let Danny help him back into bed without complaint, and closed his eyes as soon as he was prone.

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes still shut. “For the field trip. It was really sweet.”

Once Steve was asleep, Danny put the word search book aside and spent the next forty-five minutes torturing himself by looking at baby pictures of Grace on his Blackberry. The nurse paused to regard him when she came in to check on him.

“You can go home, Detective,” she said. “He doesn’t need you to watch him anymore.”

He had no way to explain how crappy that made him feel. He just shook his head. “I think I’m in it for the long haul.”

Steve was still asleep when Kono brought his chocolate-almond milkshake with extra protein powder. She sat in the recliner while Danny ate his dinner in the chair beside Steve’s bed.

“So what’s going to happen next?”

“They’ll release him, I guess. He’ll have to take care of himself.”

Kono smiled gently. “No, Danny, I mean…” She gestured at the sleeping Steve, then at him. “What’s going to _happen_ next? And don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean, or I’m going to have to hurt you.”

It was too stark a question for him to dodge. He set his fork down and stared at the wall. “I think there will have to be words between us. Words that aren’t drug-influenced.”

She shook her head curiously. “Maybe if this were _new,_ I would agree with you. If it hadn’t been going on all this time.”

“Yeah, well, going on and spoken are two different things.”

“You really think it needs to be said before it’s real?” She crumpled her sandwich wrapper and got to her feet. “I don’t think so.”

That wasn’t exactly right, but it took a lot of thinking before he figured out what he did mean. Luckily, he had time to spare. He accepted her hug on the way out the door.

“Good luck,” she whispered. “We’re all rooting for you two.”

It was a disconcerting idea, that his friends might have a better sense of what had been happening between them—for _years,_ if he was going to be honest—than he had himself. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it.

When the nurse came in to bring Steve his meds, he handed her the chocolate-almond shake. “Can you put this in the fridge for Commander McGarrett for later?” He took the little cup of pills and the water with the straw and set them aside. “And… can you give us a little privacy? I’ll make sure he takes his meds.”

She didn’t even question it. As she shut the door, he paced the room and waited restlessly for Steve to wake up. By the time he did, all the words he’d assembled were just about ready to tumble out of his mouth and land in Steve’s lap.

Steve opened his eyes, watching Danny pace. “What’s going on?”

“Kono brought you a milkshake.” He shook his head. “That’s not what I wanted to say. Look, I’m just going to…”

Instead of sitting in the chair, he sat on the edge of the bed. Steve looked up at him in surprise, but didn’t comment.

“I don’t have a single name for what we are. You, and me.” He eyed Steve’s wary expression. “Partners. Friends. Best friends, even.”

Steve nodded. When Danny touched his hand, resting on top of the covers, he didn’t pull away.

“Family, ohana. You’re Uncle Steve to Grace.”

Danny watched Steve’s tense lips relax a little, just a hint of a smile. He nodded again.

“Then it gets more complicated. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I know a lot of words about us that fit into an undefined category. Loyalty. Trust. Interdependence.” He deliberately stroked Steve’s hand, and watched his lips part and his breathing become shallow. “Risk. And, uh, hope.” He laughed nervously. “As in _I hope you’re not going to deck me.”_

“No.” Steve actually looked scornful. “I’m not.”

“Yeah, I guess I didn’t really think you would, or I wouldn’t have brought it up at all. I should have brought it up a long time ago, but I didn’t know what to say. I think… I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to search for words, but I haven’t been focusing on the right category.”

He picked up the cup bearing the two pills. From within, he selected one, holding it between two fingers. He watched Steve’s eyes focus on the pill.

“I really don’t want to imply that you need drugs to get through what… what’s going to happen next.” He brushed Steve’s bottom lip with his fingers. As Steve’s eyes fluttered closed, he smiled. “But if you’re going to have to take them anyway, how about you let me do it like this.”

Danny watched Steve open his mouth. As he tucked the pill onto his tongue, Danny made a little noise, one he couldn’t have stopped if he’d tried, and Steve echoed it. His tongue brushed against Danny’s finger.

Danny brought the cup of water to Steve’s lips and fed him the straw, waiting for his throat to bob once, twice as he swallowed. The straw left behind a trail of water on his stubbled chin as it escaped his mouth. Steve tried to move his hand, but Danny held it where it was.

“Hold still,” Danny whispered. “I got this.”

He leaned closer still, close enough for him to feel Steve’s breath mingling with his own, and licked the droplets off his skin. To his credit, Steve didn’t move, unless you counted the quivering. He watched Danny in obvious amazement as he picked up the second pill.

“I bet the doctor would say you have to wait until Maxine is fully healed before you start doing anything involving your teeth.” He offered Steve his fingers, and Steve obediently let Danny slide them into his mouth again. “But that won’t be so long, and—oh.”

Steve’s tongue was not being obedient at all. As much as Danny might have never considered the word _naughty_ as it applied to Steve McGarrett, when he looked at the expression on his face, he was considering it now.

Steve swallowed the pill without aid of water. He reached out and took the cup out of Danny’s hand and set it aside, his eyes luminous.

“You got any other words for how you want to be with me, Danno?"

“So many,” Danny exhaled. “More than I can say in an hour. Or, apparently, in one hundred and sixteen hours. But I was thinking, you’re probably going to need somebody to be with you. At your house. For a little while.”

“For a long while,” Steve countered.

He nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

“I might… need a lot of things from you.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” Danny considered the expanse of blanket that covered Steve’s body. “I think you can assume you’re going to get most of them. As many as you can name.”

Steve captured Danny’s hand in both of his. He still hadn’t looked away, not even once. “That’s a pretty broad category.”

“Yeah, I think, all this time, that was my problem. We kind of defy categorization, to a baffling degree. Like…” He moved their joined hands up high enough to touch the exposed skin around Steve’s collar. “This should not be so compelling. Why is everything about you so impossible to ignore?”

“I could make a list of those words too.” From the relaxation of Steve’s pupils, Danny would have assumed that the drugs were taking effect, if he hadn’t swallowed the pills less than five minutes ago. “You know you’re not the only one who’s been thinking them, right?”

“I did know that,” Danny said softly. “I do. If it had ever been just about getting off, I would have made a move a long time ago.”

Steve nodded. “And now?”

“Now? I’m making it.” Danny chuckled, making a flourish with his other hand. “This is it. This is my move. It’s a big one.”

“I always assumed it would be,” Steve said gravely, as Danny laughed harder. “This all-encompassing move, I mean. You and me, everything we are… plus more words?” He waited for Danny to nod. “Commitment?”

Danny nodded again.

He could only see one of Steve’s eyebrows above the bandage, but that one definitely went up. “Family? Kids?”

It was impossible not to smile. He nodded again. Steve let out a long breath.

“Maybe a little bit of getting off?” he said wistfully. 

“I can’t say I’m ever going to stop searching for the right words, babe.” He gathered Steve into his arms and hugged him, carefully, completely. “Just put a circle around all of them and call it done.”


End file.
